Archive for How to…Tips – Page 18

Recipe for an Ezine: Name It

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

Yesterday we started an 8 part series on key elements to an effective newsletter for your business. Today, we start with picking a title.

Exxtra_read_all_about_it Ingredient #1: Start Smart: Name Your Ezine

Before you name your ezine (electronic newsletter), you must get clear about its purpose, the purpose of your business, and why you care. In our Quick-Start Ezine Guide, we suggest writing down two purpose statements:

1. What is your business purpose? (Sell more products, get clients, for example)
2. What is your “higher” purpose? (To provide the best products or services, to help others to achieve something, to make lives easier, etc.)

These two layers of purpose will connect your passion to the realism of making your business successful. By articulating your true values and your business goals you will discover more energy when it comes to writing your ezine.

This will help you find an appropriate name for your ezine. Ideally, like naming anything, your title should be clear, clever and compelling. However, never sacrifice clarity in order to be clever. You want readers to know what your ezine is about just by its name, if possible.

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Categories : How to...Tips

Recipe for an Ezine: 8 Key Ingredients that Get Results

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, February 5th, 2007

©2007 Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D. & Denise Wakeman, The Blog Squadtm

Newspapers_1_1 In our work with clients, we often hear this question from entrepreneurs who want to leverage the Internet and start marketing online: “Should I publish a newsletter?” As part of our Customized Newsletter Services program, we have reviewed hundreds of e-newsletters, or ezines, and can spot common errors immediately.

We have found ezines that work well for attracting new clients usually have these eight key ingredients:

1. A great name that defines the topic
2. A defined audience and clear purpose
3. A compelling headline or subject line
4. Valuable information readers can use
5. A call to action
6. A customized template or plain text formatting
7. A bonus incentive for subscribing
8. CAN-SPAM Compliance and a privacy statement

You will notice that the first five ingredients refer to the actual content of the ezine; the last three elements refer to how it is delivered. Each element contributes to the overall effectiveness of a newsletter for growing your business.

First, are newsletters really necessary for a strong online marketing system?

Should You Publish an Ezine?

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Categories : Email Marketing Tips, How to...Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Writing Better Ezines

Writing for the 8th Grade

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

While talking with a blog client, the matter of reading levels came up. I can’t remember where I found this tip, but there’s a way to measure the reading grade level of your writing.

You know how they say to write your articles and blog posts for readers at an 8th grade level? Well, yes, they do say that. In fact, some say that if you’re writing for the general public, you should write for a 4th grade level.

Here’s how to find out the grade level of your blog writing, according to the "Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level" metric.

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Categories : Grammar & Common Usages, How to...Tips, Writing Better Ezines

Writing a Bio: 3 Tips for Marketing

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, October 13th, 2006

"How should I write my bio?" New clients to Customized Newsletter Services who are setting up their first newsletters always ask me what should go in the bio section.

It used to be that the bio section was like a mini-resume. You included your education, publications, company role and client list…. all about you and what you’ve done.

Today that would be considered ineffective. Your bio or resource box, or author blurb, (whatever you call it) should work for you as a marketing tool. The modern bio is all about them, the readers.

Here are 3 questions to answer to help make writing this a breeze:

  1. Who are you writing for? Who is your target audience?
  2. What benefits do readers/clients derive from reading or working with you?
  3. Who are you?

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Categories : How to...Tips, Online Marketing, Writing Better Ezines

Copywriting Help: Books I Use

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, September 28th, 2006

After I wrote my previous post about why you need to write, I was thinking about the tools (books) I use to help me with my writing tasks.  In this context, I refer to the writing I do nearly everyday that involves marketing and promotion.  I was looking at the pile of books next to my desk and realized there are a few I refer to a lot so I thought I’d share the resources that help me write.

Phrases that Sell by Edward Werz and Sally Germain

Words that Sell by Richard Bayan

The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy

Advertising Headlines that Make You Rich by David Garfinkel

These books help me with inspiration and phrasing for email and sales letter headlines, subheads and descriptive phrases for our products and services.

Do you have a favorite resource or book that helps you with your writing?  If so, please share it with us here by posting a comment below.

Categories : How to...Tips

You Must Write

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, September 27th, 2006

Yes, as a business person, you must write.  You must write all the time. 

Writing doesn’t come easily to me and my writing tends to be straightforward and not really clever or fun.  I’m lucky to have a partner who is a writer and who does like to write.  And, as a business owner, I have to write all the time.

Blogging definitely helps with my writing.  But another thing helps as well.  Studying what other successful marketing people do.  I subscribe to A LOT of ezines and I get a ton of promotional email.  Rather than being annoyed by it, I embrace it. 

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Categories : How to...Tips, Online Marketing, Writing Great Copy

Research Your Field on Google: How to Determine Your Findability

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, September 20th, 2006

When is the last time you researched your area of expertise on the major search engines like Google or Technorati? This week I did a little web searching using the key words and phrases that people use when searching for information on ezine publishing. I was pleased that this blog, CoachEzines, came up 1st and 2nd for some terms in Technorati, and in the top 10 for some terms in Google.

Technorati is a good way to search for other blogs in your field, but it also can search article directories and other sites.

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Categories : How to...Tips, Online Marketing, Promoting Your Ezine +/or Blog

The Blog to Email Connection: We [Heart] Feedblitz

By Patsi Krakoff
Saturday, September 2nd, 2006

If you get uncomfortable whenever someone mentions "RSS Feeds," you’re not alone. Only 9-12% of online users understands how blog, website and newsletter information can be delivered using RSS technology.

Phil_hollows_small Never fear, Feedblitz is here! As long as Phil Hollows is around, you can rest easy. Phil is CEO and founder of Feedblitz, a service that automatically delivers your blog (or other web info) to subscribers’ inboxes.

He recently shared his knowledge and innovative ideas with our listeners on our weekly teleseminar Conversations with Experts. If you missed the interview, you can grab a copy of the audio file here. Denise posted about the interview over on Build a Better Blog.

Phil explains that not only is his Feedblitz service a great way to keep readers coming back to your blog, it can be used to deliver your ezines. Just create your ezine on a blogging platform, and then use Feedblitz to broadcast it in email form. Of course. How elegantly simple. Did I mention it is free? The company also provides excellent customer service, even for users at the free service level, unheard of with many Internet companies.

Feedblitz announced early today that in the month of August their active circulation grew a whopping 17.5%, from 700,000 to 822,000. Congratulations, but this is only a fraction of how big Feedblitz will become.

The Blog Squad Heart1

Feedblitz!

Categories : How to...Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Teleclasses & Seminars

Unsubscribe Me Etiquette

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, July 27th, 2006

I read a great post on Jessica Duquette’s "It’s Not About Your Stuff!" blog…and she gives us a great email text to send out to people who arbitrarily subscribe you to their ezine, without permission, simply because they’ve met you at a networking event.

Actually, Jessica was struggling to clean out her inbox and her post gives tips on doing that. But here is the email she sends to people to take her name off their lists:

"Warmest greetings, <name>!

Thank you so much for thinking of me with your ezine. While I can see the content is excellent, I just wanted to touch base with you personally to let you know that with all due respect, I am trying to keep the flood of emails down to a dull roar in my Inbox, and so I will be unsubscribing today.

I have a suggestion that has worked well for me: rather than adding people to your list without their express permission, (which by the way is a form of spam, or unsolicited email), when you meet someone you think may benefit from your information, invite them to opt in by sending them an email with a link to your newsletter opt-in page. That way, there are no hard feelings in either direction and you are certain that each person on your list is there because they chose to be! This makes for a more potent and effective list in the long run."

Now that’s a nice way to unsubscribe without risking losing a relationship with them in the future. I’m afraid I haven’t always been so polite when this happens to me.

What do you do about this problem?

Categories : How to...Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks

Tips Booklets: The Smart Way to Get Your Message Out to Clients

By Patsi Krakoff
Sunday, June 18th, 2006

110ideastipsbooklet Three things I love about Paulette Ensign, the Booklet Queen:

  1. She found a niche for her talents and filled it, then carved it to make it unique
  2. She gives practical, no nonsense steps for how you can easily create your own tips booklet
  3. She has a great sense of humor, coupled with wisdom – a great combination

If you missed Paulette on our Conversations with Experts last Wednesday, get the audio recording. Learn how to do a short tips booklet. This makes sense for all you consultants, speakers, and authors who are working on a book. Go ahead and get a tips booklet out to your prospects while you are working on that book. It will do the marketing job for you while you are doing other things.

Some points covered:

1. Booklets are typically 3.5" x 8.5", fit in a #10 envelope, are 16-24 interior pages, saddle stitched, have minimal graphics with a cover printed on glossy cover stock.

2. Tips booklets should run 3000 to 5000 words. There’s no magic formula for the number of tips to include. Best to go by word count.

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Categories : How to...Tips, Writing Great Copy
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